Episode #71 : A holistic approach to prenatal care with Hannah Etlin-Stein
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In today’s episode, Rhonda is honored to welcome her friend and colleague, Hannah Etlin-Stein, to talk about her career journey into birth work, why she’s choosing to do things differently in her work, and what she shares with clients to help them through pregnancy AND postpartum recovery.
Hannah Etlin-Stein is a Registered Massage Therapist, Pre/Postnatal Fitness
Specialist, Certified Pilates Instructor Birth Doula and Childbirth Educator. Her
practice focuses on supporting folks in the perinatal period through three pillars of
care: bodywork, movement and birth support and education.
Hannah began working as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor over a decade
ago, where at the time her work focused almost exclusively working with
professional and pre-professional dancers and athletes. Over the years, her practice
has shifted to focus almost exclusively on the perinatal population. Her work
inevitably weaves together her experiences as a mover, a bodyworker, a birth worker
and a mother. Hannah hopes to fill the gap in holistic, full spectrum care for this
community.
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LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN EPISODE
Check out Hannah’s Strength Made Simple Postpartum program
Learn more and sign-up for Rhonda’s Strong at Home Membership
PODCAST LINKS & RESOURCES
Check out Rhonda’s FREE Resource Library
Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast
Book with Dayna (Rebirth Wellness)
SHOW NOTES:
(0:49) - PROMO: Hannah’s upcoming FREE workshop
(2:56) - Rhonda is opening the doors back up to her Strong at Home Membership
(5:32) - Introduction to Hannah Etlin-Stein
(7:08) - Hannah walks us through what got her into the fields of massage therapy, Pilates, doula care AND perinatal fitness
(15:28) - Hannah shares how she has resisted niching down - while being successful
(22:18) - Hannah talks about why a lot of the messaging in the Pilates and fitness world doesn't sit well with her and why she does things differently
(33:27) - Hannah discusses her experience with pregnancy and exercise: what has surprised and challenged her, and how it has all shaped her approach with clients
(37:21) - Hannah shares specific strategies and considerations she shares with clients during pregnancy to help them fit movement into their lives
(47:03) - Hannah discusses some things that she talks about with her birth prep clients to help them through pregnancy AND postpartum recovery
(1:07:18) - Hannah shares her take home message with us!
(1:09:15) - Episode wrap up!
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Episode #71: A holistic approach to prenatal care with Hannah Etlin-Stein
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness, the pelvic floor, and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast. Today, I am honored to welcome my friend and colleague, Hannah Etlenstein. Hannah is a registered massage therapist, pre postnatal fitness specialist, certified Pilates instructor, birth doula, and childbirth educator, all the things.
Her practice, her practice focuses on supporting folks in the perinatal period through three pillars of care. Body work, movement, and birth support and education. Hannah began working as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor over a decade ago, where at the time her work focused almost exclusively working with professional and pre professional dancers and athletes.
I didn't know that Hannah. That's interesting. Over the years, her practice has shifted to focus almost exclusively in the perinatal population. Her work inevitably weaves together her experiences as a mover, a body worker. A birth worker and a mother. Hannah hopes to fill the gap in holistic, full spectrum care for this community.
Thank you so much for joining me, Hannah. Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Rhonda. Of course. Yeah, and I apologize to everyone listening in advance. I sound very nasally, getting over sickness, which Hannah and I, before we started to hit record, Hannah as well, which Tis the time. If you're listening to it when it airs, so many people are sick.
So apologize in advance. Um, I'll let Hannah do most of the talking today. You sound great. Yes. Okay. So yeah, thank you for that bio. So, you know, listeners get to know a little bit about you there, but could you just go a little deeper into you and what got you into all of those fields? So, um, massage therapy, Pilates, doula, and then perinatal fitness.
You wear a lot of hats in what you do. Yeah, totally. It's so funny hearing even it like repeated back to me like that. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, there's so many different elements to this job. But somehow it does cohesively fit together, um, in the population that I work with. So now, and yes, it's been quite a journey to get here.
But now I focus, my work focuses almost exclusively on the perinatal population. So it's a nice way to bring together all these different hats with one community. But yeah, I started off. Um, it's funny. It does kind of feel like a different world ago, but I, you know, I grew up. I was never really sporty growing up, but I did dance and I danced quite seriously all through high school.
And when I went to university, I studied, um, a fine arts degree in dance. And while I. Never really wanted to be a professional dancer. I always knew very clearly that I didn't want to be a professional dancer. I always wanted to work with dancers. And I was pretty certain for many years after that, that I was going to, that was going to be my field of work.
I was going to work with dancers and athletes, um, in some capacity and. Yeah, I would say that I've always been a mover. I've always been really interested in fitness, um, in the body. When I was studying dance in my undergraduate degree, I just really leaned towards any class that had anything to do with kinesiology.
So all the classes that were taught that were like injury prevention or motor learning or anatomy, I always just really geared towards them. And when I was At my last year of university, one of my professors who I'd become really close to took me aside and she suggested that I apply for this master's degree in the UK.
And it was in a field called dance science, which is so weird. And people think it's so funny. And at that point, it didn't even exist in Canada. There is a program in Calgary now that offers dance science, but, um, it was really only some places in the U S and the UK that were offering degree, but it was a master's of science degree.
And it was basically like a kinesiology program, but we just focused working with dancers. So Yeah, it was really cool. I went, um, it was very life changing for me. I got really into research during that time. I was very, very close to pursuing a PhD after that. I was really drawn to working with people and working with bodies, so I wanted my work to be more client centered.
Um, so that was when, that must have been in 2012, I started working as a personal trainer. I did my first Pilates certification around this time, and I started working with dancers and athletes. I got a job at the university there, I was doing some teaching, I was working with some of the professional athletes doing like strength training programs.
It's so funny now thinking about the work that I do, I don't work with athletes at all. Yeah. Yeah, at that time, that was, um, that was really my focus. And I learned so much about the body and I learned so much about strength training and programming. Um, but when I moved back to Canada, I was working as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, but there was just something, I felt like there was something missing from my skill set and I wanted to.
focus a little bit more on some sort of body work. So I looked into physio. I looked into osteo. I kind of looked into all the different areas, but I eventually settled on massage therapy. And I really liked the idea of providing like a holistic form of care. I could provide like injury rehabilitation, but then I could also just have someone come in for a massage and just feel really good and feel really taken care of.
So I added in massage therapy. Um, and at this point, I wasn't even working with the perinatal population that much. Um, I still really thought I was going to be working with dancers and athletes. I even worked at a clinic that, um, provided care almost exclusively for professional runners. So, yeah, it's been, it's been quite the journey, but as I started to build my massage practice, my transition into offering more support for the perinatal population kind of just happened organically.
It was this slow build. I just noticed that all these pregnant people were coming into my clinic. Oh yeah. And, uh, Yeah, it was around the time that my sister had a baby, this was in 2016, so I was really, really fascinated with the whole process of birth and labor. And then I just all of a sudden had this influx of pregnant people coming into my clinic and I thought to myself, I guess I should learn how to work with pregnant people because they're coming in and I want to provide care for them.
So I started taking some more continuing education classes. I did some work in the high risk obstetrics unit at San Diego hospital, which was just really incredible and fascinating. I took an infant massage course, and I just, like, instantly fell in love with this type of work, and I think that if you're called to this type of work, birth work, or working with its population, um, something about it just really Like calls you into it.
And that's what I found happened. So I started just building up my practice in this population. Um, I would say the final straw, and I know that this is, you know, very common for many people in this field was when I got pregnant myself in 2019. And I just dove into the birth world. I became obsessed with birth, everything related to birth.
I always had this idea that I would want to, at some point offer birth support and birth work. Um, You know, in the form of being a birth doula or a postpartum doula at the time, you know, when I was pregnant and when I first had my son, it was just totally not possible because of the way that birth work is.
It's like you have to be available for long periods of time, potentially through the night. For a full day. Um, and it wasn't until he was about two years old. My son was about two years old that I finally felt like I had some capacity to open up this third area of support. So I was doing some personal training and some, and some Pilates work.
I was offering body work and then Yeah, about a year and a half ago, I started also offering birth support. And that was, I think when I found like things really came together in my business, um, when I was offering all of these different areas of support, but with the same population, um, yeah, I was able to really kind of like settle in to.
Who I was in this field and what I offered and Yeah, it's been it's been quite the journey, but it's it's pretty cool to see where I am now Oh, so cool. Thank you for sharing hannah and hannah and I'll just share know each other through a mentorship program with jesse mundell, which I talk about her all the time on the podcast.
I've had her on the podcast. Um, it's just been so amazing to just see everybody's journey in that group, but I love, I've been loving witnessing your journey, Hannah, and just really finding yourself and like finding, and it's, I want to kind of talk about like a niche, right? So sometimes in the business world, we're taught to niche down, but I think sometimes people can get trapped in.
Thinking that the niche has to be just one specific thing. And if you're not doing one specific thing, you're doing it wrong. And I know even myself, you know, with Jesse's guidance, I'm, I'm doing a lot of things too. I'm doing like postpartum fitness coaching. I'm doing PDF creation, which I've helped Hannah do that.
I'm doing a one on one group, like all the things. And sometimes I'm like, maybe I'm too spread out. Like maybe I need to narrow my focus, but I love all those things. And it sounds like. Similar experience for you, that you just get so much enjoyment out of all of those things. Why should you have to take anything out?
So do you want to just share about, um, maybe just that, that concept that, yeah, you have a lot of things going on, but somehow you're marrying them all together so nicely. Totally. And I think I resisted. Niching and that concept of niching for so long too, I was really like, no, no, no. I wanna be able to work with all sorts of people.
I don't want to, you know, pigeon my, myself, pigeonhole myself into one area. Um, and I, and I did really, really resist that, um, that concept. But, you know, by, by kind of. Accepting that this is the population in the community that I really want to work with, that I have the most expertise now in. It's given me so much more freedom to be able to explore all these various sides to my, yeah, my expertise, my business, um, my skills in, in a, in a much freer way.
And yeah, I would say that, um. You know how I marry all these different elements to my business. I actually try and keep them quite separate in many ways. So yes, um, I love when people come and see me, um, when like a pregnant person comes and sees me in all these different capacities. So when I work with them at the doula client, and they're also coming to see me for some fitness support or some movement support.
And when they're coming for body work or massage, but I do try to keep the. Um, and this is actually something that I think I've learned in the last year. And again, as you were saying, a lot of this clarity has come from working with Jesse and this mentorship program, and just kind of figuring out who I am and what my business is, but I have found that keeping the services separate is much more effective and because I offer different experiences in these different.
Area. So, you know, for me as a, as a massage therapist, when people come to see me for body work. I tend to focus a lot on, um, effects of the nervous system, on allowing them to come into my clinic and just kind of settle on the table and just receive care. And for many folks that come, you know, that passivity of it is actually so, so beneficial.
And, you know, this has shifted a lot. My perspectives and my thoughts on body work have shifted a lot as I've learned more and understood more about like what's actually happening in the body when we're receiving body work and understanding that, you know, like when we're working on the piriformis, we're not actually like making a change on a long-term level in the length of the piriformis and how it's all very much, um, mediated through the nervous system and that the act of someone coming in and receiving care and just allowing their body to be taken care of.
Is so, so effective and important for this. So when people come and see me for massage, I really try to give them that experience of just coming in and settling down. And, you know, there is kind of this hierarchy and in, at least in massage therapy, definitely where it's like, if you offer sports massage or you offer like injury, it's somehow better, but I'll never forget when I was in massage therapy school, one of our teachers said to us.
You know, how many people are coming in and dying from a sprained ankle? Like people aren't dying from a sprained ankle, but people are dying every day from mental health and from stress and from all these other areas that we know that massage there can be, can be so effective on. We have really good research that in.
Pregnancy, massage therapy, body work, touch can be really effective in, um, depression, in anxiety. Like we actually have these, this research showing us that. So I tend to focus my massage therapy practice very much on this. And then if people want some exercises or some rehabilitation, I really encourage them to then come and see me in a fitness capacity.
And then yes, we'll work on. Building resilience through the body, through strength and, you know, having their body, um, you know, creating tools and strategies in their body so that they can go through life, uh, feeling, feeling good in their body in a more long term way. So I do try to encourage people to come see me in these various different ways.
Um. It is really awesome when one client comes and sees me for all these different things, because it's, it's all their body, it's the same body that we're working with. So I'll have, you know, some information on kind of how they move when I see them in the massage clinic, or I'll have, they're seeing me as their doula client.
Um, they're my doula client. I'll, I'll kind of know what their experience, a little bit more in depth, what their experience has been through pregnancy. Wow. What an amazing experience to offer somebody that you have all of those. available tools to help them. And what I'm hearing from you is that it is just such a client focused approach to things in the sense that you're getting them to tell you what they might need versus Hannah with all these hats saying like, you need this and then you also need this and let's do this instead of like, you know, I just need to come for a massage and just lay on the table and not have my kids screaming.
And sometimes that's what people without. Putting our biases of like, oh, I also have to teach you this exercise. Like you also, you know, like sometimes I know I get into that habit of like trying to show them all the things, but sometimes it's like, no, I just need one thing to focus on. And that's going to be good enough for today.
Totally. And that's shifted a lot in the last few years, but I would say absolutely. One of my main like values is client centered care is really trusting that the client knows what they need. They're the expert on their own body. They know what they need. And I don't want to put my own. experiences or my own biases on them.
Yes, I have a lot of knowledge and I know the research and I know kind of like in a high level way, um, some of the things that could be helpful for you and I'll give you lots of options. And then ultimately I totally trust that you're going to choose what you need. And many people come and see me for massage and don't say a word to me through the whole hour.
And I would say most of the people that come and see me, they just kind of come and receive that. And I think it's really important. passive care and that support and just that experience of being taken care of. And, you know, I might recommend like there are other things that we can do. And if you want to see me in this capacity, we could work in this way, but absolutely client centered care is so, so important in my business.
So let's switch gears a little bit. So you and I have had wonderful conversations, especially working under Jesse's guidance, um, just about starting to do things differently. And I know, I love hearing, you know, your story coming from Pilates background, because I know, as with anything, there can be good and bad experiences with some of these things.
And, um, I know you've talked to me before about how some of the messaging in like the Pilates world and also the fitness world didn't sit quite right with you. And now you're taking sort of like a conscious effort to do things your own way and do things differently. Can you just tell us about that journey?
Yes, absolutely. I'm so happy to talk about this because I think it's so important and I know it's something that we've connected on, um, many times, you know, when I think back into my career and like the last 15 years and where I've come here, you know, it really did start with movement. It really started with movement and fitness.
Um, my, my, the first experiences I had working with bodies was as a Pilates instructor, as a personal trainer. And. Movement has always been such a part of my life and my experience. But when I look back at a particular moment in time, the moment when I came back to Canada, I was working as a personal trainer and I decided to kind of move into, um, massage therapy.
I don't think I would have been able to say this at the time or had the language to say this at the time, but while it was a move to. Gain more skills and work with bodies in a different capacity in many ways. Now, retrospectively, I can see that it really was a shift away from fitness and from the fitness world and from that whole.
bubble that I was living in. And at that time, I remember so much about the fitness industry, just like not sitting well with me and just feeling really yucky and like diet culturey and not really having, again, language or community to even know how to push back against this. So I just kind of moved away from it.
And I gained a lot by building my massage practice. I was still doing a little bit of. Pilates work on the side, but I was working almost exclusively like one to one with clients and my clients. I was really choosing where like, you know, a 75 year old man who was recovering from hernia surgery or like an older woman with osteopenia.
Like I was really trying to distance myself away from um, like the general fitness world, but I, I do remember this moment I was teaching at this Pilates studio and It was right before my class. I was teaching a class called Trim and Tone and Body Sculpt. Like, it's so cringy now even to think that I taught those classes, but I did, and that's what they were called.
And I remember right before the class started, I was in the staff room and one of my, one of the managers there, like one of the women who was at the highest in this, um, In this Pilates studio. I was saying, Oh, I really want to think of a theme for this class. You know, I really want something to bring it together.
And she was like, Oh, it's spring. You should make it about, um, getting your body ready for the beach. Just like beach ready beach body. And I remember being like, no, like, no, there's no way that's going to be the theme of my class. And I remember at that moment feeling this like, where am I? And what am I doing?
And how are these the people that I'm working with? But again, I didn't really know. how to push back or I didn't know that other people were doing it differently. So I just kind of stepped away. I built my massage practice. Um, you know, I focus more on just like the rehabilitative side. And it wasn't until I came back kind of like when my, in the last few years really, where I'm really focusing in on the perinatal population and I'm realizing just like how essential movement is.
Like you can't take movement. Out of the equation. It is so imperative building strength as you know, you're in the pregnant period of life or postpartum or into perimenopause, like building strength, resilience, long term change in the body. You can't do it without movement. It's so essential. And I realized like, I need to be offering this again.
This is where so much of my expertise is, but I need to be doing it differently. Yeah, so I started educating myself a lot more. Again, we were able to connect through a lot of the work that Jesse's doing. Um, you know, I, I just learned a lot more about, you know, fat phobia, and I started examining my own biases and the connection between fat phobia and white supremacy and how.
So much of this is so harmful to so many people, to all of us, really. And I started to find more community of people who were also pushing back against this type of messaging in the fitness world, and I was like. Oh, you can offer fitness support and you can offer movement support and it cannot feel yucky.
This is amazing. It was a real light bulb moment to me. And I was like, wow, I can actually do this. I just have to be really clear on what my boundaries are. I do very clear in my messaging about what I do, what I offer and what I don't offer. And. I can do this and I can do this safely for my own body and for everyone around me.
So it's been quite the journey, but it's been so wonderful to be able to step back into movement and fitness in a way that feels really good. And I, I want to make it really clear, you know, especially with working with. People who are pregnant, people who are postpartum, whose bodies are changing a lot.
It's not to say that I don't welcome conversations around this. How uncomfortable it can feel to be in this body, in a body, to be in bodies. How uncomfortable that can be, especially during this phase of life. Um, I'm all there for that convert those conversations. It's not to say that, you know, having thoughts about wanting to look a certain way or losing weight are bad or shameful.
I'm just very clear that the support that I offer is not weight loss support. Honestly, I don't know. I don't know how to do that. I don't have any expertise and I don't care about changing the shape of your body. I care so much more about how you feel in your body, how we can exist in bodies, um, to the best of our capacity.
So. Yeah, it's created so much more freedom in my work. So amazing. Oh, sounds so similar to my journey to Hannah. Yeah. I think so many light bulb moments for me along that journey to have the fact exactly like you said, that it is possible to lead a business this way. Right. I think for a long time, I didn't think it was possible because I feel like.
You know, some other business coaches, maybe that I have followed in the past, you know, unless you're selling weight loss, you're not going to be successful because weight loss is so lucrative. And that's just a given that's not, you know, that's, that's true. Right. And so, yeah, I think having examples and.
Having this community with Jesse has been so helpful to just see businesses growing and thriving in the realm of, you know, anti weight loss. I think it's just so incredible to see and just, I don't know, opening people's eyes, like our consumers eyes too, that they, they too, they can find programs that They might not have to focus on what their body looks like.
Because I think, I don't know if you're finding this, more and more clients that come to see me now are also on that journey themselves, which is cool because I feel like that's also like the messaging I've heard is, you know, maybe you have to talk about weight loss to get someone to start with you and then you can start to have those conversations.
But I'm like, no, I'm leading with my values from day one, having those conversations on social media. So that when someone does come to see me, they know what I'm about. They know that that is my approach and because of that, I draw in people that are taking steps towards healing that relationship with their body and with, um, exercise already.
Absolutely. And it's so easy sometimes because now I've really, um, Like, I've really surrounded myself with people who are doing similar work to the work that we're doing and having conversations like us. And then I do step back and out of this bubble and I realize how many people are still doing the same thing.
And, you know, when I go on social media, kind of like outside my own bubble, I see how much of it is still about getting your body back, you know, changing, you know, bouncing back from pregnancy. And, um, the messaging is. Still so everywhere. So everywhere. So I feel like we need to really yell it from the rooftop as much as we can because while it feels like to be in my little bubble, this is the way that it's happening.
Um, everywhere. It's, it's really not. And I've had to, you know, I've As I said, like finding community of people. I'm also teaching at a Pilates studio and you know, these are the conversations that we're having in the studio as well about, um, like, we're, we're really surrounded by people who are having the same conversations who are interested in breaking these same patterns.
Um, and yeah, it's, it's very liberating. It is. I know. Once you see diet culture and toxic fitness culture, you can't unsee it. Yeah. I don't know how I physically, mentally, emotionally could ever go back to that. I can't. And I would say like, again, back to kind of what I was saying, it's not to say that these conversations aren't happening.
In fact, you know, I am 27 weeks pregnant myself right now. My body has changed so much in the last few months. And it's actually been really, this has been one of the biggest struggles for me. More even this pregnancy than with my son, Isidore. I think because I'm in this work a lot more, um, so much is coming up.
And I. Don't and I I'm certain that I would not be able to. be making it through this pregnancy in this way as all these feelings are coming up. I would not be able to be showing myself on social media in the same way if I hadn't had done this work before now. Um, and I don't think I'd be able to really safely be doing this work as my body's changing and as all these feelings are coming up, I'm able.
You know, not perfectly. This is a process. We're all in process, but definitely I'm I'm more able to continue in this work. Um, because my values and because these conversations I'm having with clients, I have to say, like, clients come to me and thank me for doing this. And there's been so much positive feedback that that I, you know, I'm working in this way.
Amazing. I love it, Hannah. So yeah, congrats on your pregnancy. And, uh, I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. Your experience with pregnancy, having the knowledge that you do, having the experience that you do, um, what has been maybe surprising or challenging to you in just living in that body and also in like the fitness world?
I know you try to stay pretty active yourself. What are some things that you've learned and how has that maybe influenced how you work with clients? Yeah, it's been really cool to be, um, going through this process of Pregnancy and preparing for birth. Now. So in this work, um, I've been pregnant four times and every single time that I've been pregnant has been such a different experience with movement with my body.
Um, uh, I, when I. My first two pregnancies was kind of when I was just getting into this work, 2019, 2020, when I was really starting to like, I don't know, I guess niche. I guess start to, um, accept the fact that these were the people and the population that I really wanted to work with. But it was just such a different experience being pregnant that time, um, those two times.
And now I have been pregnant again twice this year. One time was a miscarriage. I'm 27 weeks now and it's just been such a different experience. My, my relationship with movement and fitness has changed so, so much. And I think that this has been really valuable for sure, because it gives me such a wider range of, um, experiences to be able to talk with clients and be able to relate with clients.
Um, and it also just really reminds me how every pregnancy is so, so different. And. I very much believe that movement is so important, but finding the type of movement that is right for you in this specific moment in your life is key. So, you know, with my pregnant, with my pregnancy with Isidore, it was right during COVID.
Um, he was born in June, 2020. So the last three months of my pregnancy, I wasn't working. It was the very start of COVID and the movement that I loved doing was walking and I would walk. All day, every day, um, for hours and hours and hours. And I felt so great walking. This pregnancy, I feel horrible walking.
I can barely walk to pick him up at daycare and back. My pelvis hurts. My hips hurt. And for me, for this pregnancy, you know, strength training has just been exactly what my body needs. And, um, it's really interesting to kind of, See these differences and how different bodies need different types of things, depending on so many things.
My the time that I have now, I don't have hours and hours and hours to walk. I'm parenting a toddler. I'm running a full time business. I'm managing a marriage that's changing and shifting a household. There's just so much more. In my life now that is so different than that time. And I think that this experience has really helped me connect more with clients and really, again, kind of going back to that client centered care, realize that, you know, there's no one movement that is best when you're pregnant.
There's no one thing. What I try and do with my clients is try to become as strategic as we can, as efficient as we can in finding what they need in that time. And yes, I have some ideas of, you know. Things that will help when you're building when you're preparing for birth or managing pregnancy or preparing for postpartum, but really making it client centered care, making it individual for that specific person.
Yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, you and I talked about this too, that just changing that definition of what counts as exercise, right? I think, again, when we come from this, like, die cultury world, we're taught that, yeah, unless you're sweating buckets, breathing heavy, and, like, maybe in Pilates world, unless you're, your muscles are burning, and you're, yeah, toning, if you're not doing any of those things, then it doesn't count, and what's the point, right?
But just Yeah. Helping people understand that that spectrum of exercise is so broad and all of it is beneficial, especially when we're finding the type of movement that honors where we're at. Right? So I think that's a great example of like, um, your pregnancy with Isidore, that walking felt good. And so it may be, had you forced yourself to strength train, it might not have felt that good.
And not to say, yeah, like if you're not strength training, it's not. The end of the world walking is wonderful, right? So just giving, you know, folks that freedom that It doesn't really matter what you're choosing if you're moving your body you're doing well Or if you're not too right, I think we also have to like avoid that.
Um That thought that, yeah, if you're not moving your body, then you're failing as a human too. That's also not part of it. Totally, and I think that's something that, like, now, especially during this pregnancy, which has been, if there's one word that I think could describe this pregnancy, it's exhaustion.
Fatigue and exhaustion, which I know is so, so common. Folks who are pregnant with another child already. Um, But yeah, you know, four years ago, Hannah would laugh at what I now consider exercise or movement. I would, I would, I would think like that, like, that's, that's not exercise, like doing it 10 minutes of some mobility, but like, if I get that in today and that's my movement, um, that's great for me.
So, but yeah, I think you're totally right. And I, and I, I say this a lot, you know, movement is so, so important. I will die on that hill. I think it is so important. And sometimes the most important thing is just resting and not moving. So it's not to say that, you know, that phrase, I hate that phrase.
Something is always better than nothing. I'm like, no, sometimes actually just lying down. If I have had a full day, I've massaged for clients. I, my toddler just got home. Like Often like there's no chance I'm gonna be lifting weights that night. I need to rest. I need a really nice big bowl of ice cream to comfort my soul.
And that's actually what is the most, most health promoting for me in that moment. So, yeah, I think it's so nuanced. It's so, um, It's so balanced. Whenever I talk about consistency and movement, I really like to think of it more on like a big scale, having a movement practice in your life that you have access to when it feels good.
So consistency for me is not about, you know, 10, 000 steps every single day or having, or strength training every single day, or even consistently three times a week forever, there's going to be seasons of life where. We have more movement and there'll be seasons of life when we need to pare down our movement and rest more, but consistency is over a lifetime.
So having access to movement and having some sort of memory of a movement practice that we can turn on when we need it. I love that. Yeah, I talk about that with clients too, like change your definition of consistency. Yeah. Again, toxic fitness world would say, unless you're working out four or five days a week forever, then you're failing and you're not consistent, right?
Versus over the course of a lifetime. I always talk with clients. We're going to have ebbs and flows. Always. That's a given we're going to go through pregnancy, postpartum. menopause, sickness, injury is a given, right? So learning that ebbs and flows are normal and learning how to kind of taper off, taper back in, taper off.
Honestly, that's like the biggest skill I try to help my clients learn instead of like the toxic fitness culture would be Well, if I didn't work out for this time, I have to, like, run and dive back in because I have to make up for lost time and, like, right? So, I think that is, like, such a skill, um, and recognizing, yeah, consistency can have a really broad definition.
It doesn't have to be this, like, hardcore definition. Absolutely. And, you know, I think parenthood is just, like, the biggest lesson on In that there's no such thing as consistency. Nothing lasts forever, especially in the early years. I mean, I still consider myself early postpartum. Like I, I really think that the first three years, the first five years, um, you are so in this, you know, postpartum parenthood and nothing is consistent.
So how can you plan your life around it? You have to just learn how to go with the flow. I mean, we finally got to this point where. My kid, like, kind of sleeps well, finally, maybe, he's three and a half. And then last night, I was just saying to you before, we had the worst night's sleep ever. He woke up, he went to bed at 10.
45 and he woke up at 5am wanting me to read books to him. I was like, you know, it's, it's just, um Any every single phase, both the good and the bad are going to shift. So you really have to kind of just lean into this. There's no such thing as consistency because I have no clue how we're going to sleep tonight.
I have no clue what my energy levels are going to be tomorrow. I had the thought that I was going to do a workout today and we got such a little sleep last night that I'm just like, it's not happening. Yeah. Yeah, and then I just I think back to my former self and I don't know if you can relate to this that Like imagine feeling all those things feeling exhausted feeling drained feeling like you didn't get sleep And then tacking on like imagine if you felt guilt this whole day of like I should be working out.
I'm not working out I'm a terrible human. I suck. Like, I'm not working out at, you know, like all these cells make it up. Like, I know I live that way. And that's where I like really broke free for me. Postpartum was like, yeah, I had this picture of how often I should be working out. I wasn't, I was filled with guilt.
All of a sudden I had like a line in the sand of like, no, I need to talk to myself the same way I would talk to a friend or my kids. It's okay to rest. Like we're human. And so like removing that guilt and then. Now, like, even my experience, I will share for those of you that have older kids, I hate to say it, Hannah, but it doesn't get better because I have a four and a six year old, and I've been pretty consistent of getting to Olympic weightlifting every Wednesday, but I haven't been the last three weeks because one kid was sick, then the other kid was sick, and then I was sick.
So I've missed, like, the last three weeks, and I, I felt like, okay, I'm in this bubble where my kids are older, they're at school. Nope. And so a former me, again, would have been like, I'm paying for this. Like that, that is a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but I'm paying for this service. I am not showing up.
A former self would have been like, I suck. I can't stay consistent. What's wrong with me? Or like force myself to work out if I wasn't going. But now I'm like, it is what it is. It's fine. I'll get back to it when I'm ready. When things settle down, it'll ramp back up again. It's fine. It's life, right? So I think finding that, like, peace and that freedom of like, it's okay.
It's okay if we're not working out all the time. We'll be fine. You're so right. These are life lessons. It's funny, I talk, we talk about these things as like Very, and I think they come up for a lot of people, um, during this time, but you're absolutely right. These are lessons that we're learning for life.
You know, I had a conversation, I met my cousin for coffee. Her kids are in their twenties and thirties and we met for coffee last week and she was talking about her life and her kids and everything. And I just turned to her and I was like, Oh yeah, parenting is really forever. She was like, yeah, parenting is forever.
Like, it just, it doesn't, it doesn't end. But these are great lessons to learn. It is, yeah. And the one thing that came up to you just when you were talking about, you know, again, you know, healing our relationship with movement and realizing that consistency, consistency doesn't have to look a certain way is learning to just like listen and trust our bodies.
And I think that's one thing I've really learned is that Diet culture, toxic fitness culture really takes us so far away from that where it's, yeah, it's, you know, like maybe like a binge restrict behavior where you're not listening to hunger cues, fullness cues, um, the toxic fitness culture behavior where you're forcing yourself to work out even if you, your body doesn't feel like it.
Or like the opposite, doing nothing because you can't do a hard workout when really sometimes your body is telling you like it needs a little bit of movement, right? Like, I think, I don't know if you find this in the work that we do is, you know, taking ourselves away from those toxic messaging and helping clients actually understand to, yeah, listen to their body, what that actually means, trust their body.
Trust those decisions. Just build, like, wisdom about what their body's saying. And then that just opens up, again, so many doors of freedom that, yeah, just choosing what feels good for you in those seasons, and there's no black or white. Absolutely, yeah. No, really accepting the nuance to that. I totally agree.
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So let's get into a little bit of like the birth prep world. Cause I know again, your, um, role as a doula, you love supporting folks in that phase as well. So what do you think, what are some things that you talk about with your clients in the birth prep world, you know, with all those hats that you have, your, your doula support, your massage.
Um, you're all of those things that you, that you work with clients with, what are some topics that you discuss with them? Yeah. Um, so when I work with clients prenatally throughout their pregnancy, there's kind of like three umbrellas of support that I, um, that I provide. So the first one is, you know, really trying to manage the demands of pregnancy.
So, you know, make their bodies feel as well as you possibly can during this stage of life, knowing that, um, It is temporary, like no one is pregnant forever. That is the one thing that I can say with certainty to all my clients, you will not be pregnant forever. Um, but really managing those demands. So whether those are, you know, postural shifts that are happening, um, you know, aches and pains, maybe like pelvic girdle pain, maybe some symptoms that are having, I really try and look at this also from the perspective of.
All these things that are happening that your body is doing are important. So these are really important changes that are happening. Of course, your posture is shifting. You're growing an entire, another human being inside of you and your body is producing an entire organ. Like, of course, you're having these symptoms.
Of course, your body is tired. So rather than the perspective of let's try and change this. And I see this a lot in prenatal fitness is. You know, the perspective of let's try and like chain. Let's try and prevent these postural changes from happening. And I really just don't think that that is a possible because these postural shifts are happening.
All these shifts are happening for very, very important reasons. Um, instead, how do we just manage the discomfort that you're feeling? So, for example, you know, with the growing uterus. Often it results in people's pelvis kind of like tipping forward a little bit. Um, of course that's going to happen. We have all this extra weight in the front of our body and the body's brilliant.
So it's going to adjust to be able to adapt to this. So instead of, you know, getting people to constantly engage their glutes and tip their pelvis back so that their pelvis is neutral, we talk about, okay, well, what other things can we do in the body to manage? This. So can we really build up the strength and resilience through the back of the body so that you are able to manage this change?
Can we get you throughout the day in accessing other positions of your pelvis so that there is a little bit of balance? You know, so maybe we get you doing some posterior shifts throughout the, throughout the day of your pelvis. That's kinda like the first part is talking about like, how do we, how do we manage pregnancy?
The second part is then like, how do we actually prepare for birth? So this obviously depends on The type of birth the person is, um, planning to have, but this is the part that I, I think I love the most because it allows my like biomechanical nerdy side to really come out. This is like where I really first.
Jumped into this field. So I love, love, love doing birth prep. And again, this is going to look different depending on the type of birth the client is planning. But, you know, I like to think of this a from a physiological point of view and from a biomechanical point of view. So from a physiological point of view, we actually have some research showing that, you know, during labor contractions, um, the birthing person's heart rate can get up to about moderate or even vigorous.
Intensity exercise during contraction. So if you're not used to having your heart rate up to that level, that can be really scary to experience. And what we know about birth and managing birth is we want to try to allow the nervous system to be as calm as possible to try and take out fear and to try and really just kind of lean into the experience.
So if your heart rate is going up to The intensity level of hiking up a mountain and you don't have that experience. That can be really discerning. So from a physiological point of view, that's kind of one of the areas that we might work on. How do we, um, get the experience of having your heart rate go up so that it doesn't feel as scary when it happens during labor.
So I've actually more recently started to integrate this into my birth prep with clients more. Maybe we'll do kind of like a minute of. Some sort of exercise that will get the heart rate up and then maybe 2 to 3 minutes, which does mimic kind of like an active labor pattern of maybe in a resting position on the birth ball or something that they might experience in labor.
So we're, we're kind of mimicking birth in that way. That's kind of like from a physiological perspective. From a biomechanical perspective, we might look at like, how can we get our body into positions and practice different positions that might help us during labor? So depending on the stage of labor, when the baby's entering the pelvis, maybe moving down through the pelvis to the mid pelvis or exiting, um, different positions that we can put our body in are going to help.
Make this process more efficient. They're going to help. It's not the be all and end all. There's so much involved in labor. I really like to also say that, you know, if you learn to internally rotate your hip, it does not mean that labor is going to just smooth sail for sure. But these are all kind of the different parts that we can put together to give us the best chance of having a smooth and efficient labor.
So. We might practice positions. Um, we might try to, you know, do exercises that help our pelvis move into different positions. We may do specific things that can help baby get into a better position to make, again, labor smoother. Um, Yeah, so that's kind of like the birth prep area. And then the third element is how do we prepare for postpartum?
So how do we prepare our body so that after this is all done, no matter how labor goes, we don't have full control over that. How can we best set ourselves up for the best experience postpartum? And this is where, you know, it does get a bit nuanced because everyone's experience is going to be. Very, very different, but I will say that, um, you know, mindset and a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about, it becomes into play and how I help my clients prepare for the postpartum period.
Because while yes, pregnancy is, um. You know, it could be a different experience for everyone postpartum is again like the much longer time and where their life is going to shift so dramatically so some of the things we talk about for setting ourselves setting yourself up for postpartum is upper body strength.
I think that one of the things that I didn't really appreciate about postpartum was how much upper body strength I was going to need, you know. Lifting the baby with strollers, with car seats, um, upper body strength and resilience become so, so important. The other thing that I think is so important when I talk about postpartum with my clients is just having access to all different types of movement.
So postpartum is Like the most awkward time. I don't know if you found this, but you know, I have this memory of like lying on the floor, like curled kind of on my side with like my arm up in the crib, rubbing my son's back and then like commando crawling out of the room so that like he didn't wake and I.
And it's just nothing really can prepare you for this and absolutely not doing perfect deadlifts with absolute perfect form is not going to prepare you for, you know, putting your child down in the crib for the 10th time with your back over, you know, trying to get a baby in a car seat while trying to prevent a toddler from running on the road, you know.
Rather than trying to get people to have perfect form or do things, you know, in this perfect way, which potentially is important if you're lifting 350 pounds, like if that's what you're preparing for, if you are, you know, lifting things with such high amounts of weight, then yes, maybe we need to be really, really strict on form and be very specific.
But for this population, What I think is so much more valuable is just having people experience their bodies move in so many different ways and all the different ways to prepare them for the awkwardness of postpartum. So, you know, we'll do deadlifts with curled backs or we'll do it with straight backs.
We'll do squats with our legs in all different positions and really just like building up the body's resilience to the most awkward movements that you can ever, um, that you could ever think of because Postpartum is so awkward. It is, yes. I love that. Just that whole spectrum that you're able to offer people, Hannah, is just amazing.
And I think, such an important take home message, I think that was my experience too, is, um, you know, so much of our society helps women in pregnancy, and postpartum is just like, just figure it out. Yeah, totally. That's how I felt, even as a physiotherapist. I'm like, I didn't learn any of this. I didn't learn how to recover from postpartum, let alone teach people how to recover from postpartum.
So I think just having those conversations and just that, you know, mental prep that like it is going to be hard, it's going to be challenging. And there's so many things we can do to help prepare you, nothing fully ever prepares you until you're in it. However, yeah, having those conversations, preparing for different movements, building strength.
All of those things are just going to help someone set up for that much more success. So that's amazing that you can help that full spectrum of pregnancy to, you know, birth prep to postpartum. So, so needed. It's so cool. And what's coming up for me too, as you're saying, this is also, you know, I think this conversation is definitely shifting, but there is still just so much fear that is out there around what to do and what not to do.
And I see this so much with my clients. So many people come and say, well, I know I probably shouldn't be doing this, or, you know, I want to come and see you because I want to make sure that I'm doing these exercises, right. And there's this. We've created this fear and I think that a lot of fitness instructors and people in this field promote that in this way of saying, you need me.
If you, if I'm not watching you do this, if you're not doing this with me, then you could be doing it wrong and you could hurt yourself. And there's this real kind of fear mongering. And I really try to push back against that. Yes, of course, having one to one support can be so effective. And I like to think of what I can do is, you know, if you're moving.
You're doing great. You're winning. You're nailing it. If it's working for you, I will never tell someone that the way that they're moving is wrong. If however, you know, you want a little bit more support through this, if you want, you know, there's, there are ways that we can help you prepare for your birth, that's just a little bit more strategic.
So, you know, so many of my clients will come and have very little time. So maybe in your 30 minutes that you have to move every day, and right now you're walking, maybe that's not the most strategic way to be moving. Using your 30 minutes of movement in this field. So yes, then I can absolutely give you some strategies on.
Other things that we could do ways that we can, as I said, like prepare your body a bit more strategically and efficiently for the demands of pregnancy for birth and for postpartum, but I really try to push against this idea of. And if you don't do this, you could hurt yourself or you might, you know, injure yourself or there's this danger around movement, which I think really does exist in our culture.
Um, and I, I just, I find so, so problematic. I agree. Yeah, I can get all my soap box, soap box about that too, Hannah, that I was just having a conversation with somebody about this the other day that I've always been this way as a physiotherapist. I'm very much like a big picture seer. So even in physio school, we learned a lot about just manual therapy techniques where Yeah, like say you're working on someone's neck or you're working on their wrist and you're like manipulating the bones.
I never understood that. Something about how my brain functions, I was like, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't feel it. I don't understand how this is helping somebody. I was always like, let's just get, let's start moving their neck. Like, I always was like a global thinker. And so for me, it took me a while to like, find my space as a physiotherapist because of that.
And so, I relate to what you say so much, that like, yeah, even in the world of physiotherapy, that is so well meaning. I find I hear stories like this where clients come to me and they're like, Oh, so and so said I can't do a side plank yet because I haven't learned how to not overuse my obliques or I have, I haven't learned to contract my transverse abdominus before.
And I will never like, you know, I will never bad talk or discount what a therapist says. So I'm very careful about how I talk about this. However, my opinion is that, yeah, then we're putting people into these little boxes of what they're allowed to do. That, how is that helping them in their, again, in their life?
How is that helping them take care of their kiddos if they're only allowed and only taught that it's safe to do these, like, small little box of movements? Right? Like, you and I are very Anthony Lo fans, and I feel like, I very much resonate with his style of teaching, that Yeah. Honestly, I think it's just like a culture of people just aren't moving enough, right?
Versus not moving well. Yeah, there can be nuance of helping people move better once they are moving, but if they're not moving at all, let's get them moving, right? And then putting fear on them is not doing them any, any service, I think. Absolutely. I mean, if there's one thing that I've learned from my education in pain science and what we now know, and what's, you know, more of the more recent research on pain science, it's how we think about pain, how we think about our body is going to impact how we feel in our body more than anything.
I mean, we have so much great research showing that, you know, they'll do MRIs of people's spine and people will have no pain and have all these issues with their spine. As soon as they find out that they have these issues, they start experiencing pain. So it's not to say that there's never a place for that, for these types of, um, you know, diagnoses, but I think we just have to be really, really careful that we, the, the, the thing that's front and center is how we're talking about our bodies, how we're talking about our client's bodies, the fear and the, um, You know, the ideas that we're putting in their minds about what they what their bodies can and cannot do, having it be led by them, and also just like really reinforcing the education that, you know, it could be different thinking that you're going to be out of pain is gonna.
Is is the the primary predictor of if you actually get out of pain like that's fascinating to me that our brains are so so important in this in this whole process so you know I always say like there are, there are no exercises that I will say are off limits if you're pregnant. Or postpartum. I don't work in that way.
Um, there are going to be exercises that are going to be better on one person and worse on someone else at that stage in their life. And that could also change. We keep coming back to them. Um, if someone is scared of an exercise or they, they think that it's going to hurt them, that's fine. We move on because that exercise probably isn't going to help them because they think it's not going to help them regardless of whether, you know, the exercise itself isn't.
So, yeah, I think that, um, You know, that perspective is just the most important in the work that we do for sure. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I totally agree. I even had a conversation with a client this morning who is three months postpartum, uh, post emergency C section. And, uh, she's working with me and also doing some classes, uh, yoga classes on the side.
And she was so excited to come to me this morning and say, Rhonda, I did a plank and it felt so good. And I was like, that is amazing. Good for you. And you know, I, again, I don't want to assume things, but I could see maybe another therapist being like, are you sure you should be doing that yet? Like, maybe let's check out, like, let's check how you're doing it.
And then, so in today's session, we did planks again, because she felt so good with them. I'm like. Let's do it. And they, they looked great. They felt great. Same as you. I'm not going to be like, you know, maybe tilt your pelvis a little bit. That's not how I work. I'm like, looks great. Feels great. Keep moving.
Right? And so, and how empowering is that for people? Right? Versus yeah, like this mentality of like, we're here to fix somebody. We're here to empower somebody and actually for me being a virtual therapist has really helped with that that like Yeah, I probably used to think that I had to be there with them.
I had to cue them. I had to hands on them All of these things and they needed me to tell them if they were doing something right or wrong. Whereas now, you know, I get, I, in the session, we again talk about how does it feel, let's try this, if it doesn't feel good, make a modification, whatever that is. And then I send them home to do it on their own.
Because I'm like, this has to be something you can continue without me. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So that's, yeah, I relate to that so much. And my education in Pilates training specifically was very much like that. It was very hands on. It was very, um, you know, tilt your palms a little bit more this way and a little bit there.
Hold there. That's it. That's the position. And I moved away from that a little bit, and then I went back and had some private sessions with an old Pilates instructor that was working at the studio that really operated in this way, and I remember having this experience of how hard that was in my body to be just like manipulated in that way, and it felt so less freeing, and yeah, it's shifted so much, and I would say that, um, for me to just switch to more virtual, uh, Hair has really, um, made this even more, um, like present for me, in that you can't do that.
You can't sit next to them and tip their pelvis exactly this way or move their arm exactly in this position. You actually have to rely so much more on them feeling in their bodies. And that's so much more helpful for them, really. That's actually such a better way that's going to serve them in their entire life.
Because again, I'm not going to be there with them doing every single exercise, every single movement for the rest of their life, nor should I be. Nope. No. Yeah. Amazing. Oh, we could talk for hours, Hannah. Totally. And I feel like the conversation went in different directions than I anticipated, but in such a beautiful way.
So, um, let's start wrapping up. I'll be aware of your time. Um, what we've talked about a lot of things today. Um, if there was one take home message from Hannah wearing all these different hats, what would that one take home message be to leave our listeners with today? Yeah, I think it's what we've been.
Yeah, I've loved how this conversation has gone to Rhonda. It's gone in all these different directions that I did not anticipate. But, you know, I think if I was to come back to one Concept or one theme, it would be, you know, I really want to, you know, I talk a lot about very specific strategies and sometimes I can find myself getting very specific about it.
Like let's learn how to posterior tip the pelvis to, you know, open up the pelvic inlet to allow baby to drop in, or let's, you know, learn how to internally rotate our, our legs for this specific purpose. And while yes, this strategy can be very valuable, um, It's really just one element of this work, and I really just want to come back to the concept that all movement is good movement.
If you are moving in a way that feels good in your body, that isn't, you know, wrapped up in shame, that you can, that you can find a way to fit into your life. You're killing it. You're doing great. And if you want more support, and if you feel like something that's a little bit more individualized for you would feel helpful, then great.
I think that, you know, folks like us and lots of other people who are doing work like this can be really valuable. But at the end of the day, you know, movement is movement. And I really just want to promote that idea that movement is movement. Anything that you're doing that feels good in your body is great.
And if it feels good for you, It's good. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. Beautiful. So well said. Mic drop. Awesome, Hannah. So if folks are listening and they're like, wow, Hannah's just doing amazing things, I really want to reach out to her. I'd love to work with her. Tell us about, yeah, the different programs you're offering right now and how people can find you.
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I am, as I said, I'm entering into my third trimester, so I am starting to slow things down a little bit in terms of my group programs. Um, I hang out the most probably on Instagram. I love to connect with people there. So if you want to find me, you can find me there. My name is hannah at lynnstein dot R.
M. T. Um, I also have a website, which has some free resources. Um. I have a strength training, a postpartum strength training program that is like a DIY 12 week program that just gives you a little bit of structure. The exer the workouts are very short and effective, um, and, you know, they move the body in all the different ways.
Um, My RMT practice is going to slow down in the new year while we welcome this new baby into our life. So that is going to slow down if you are in the Toronto area, but I am continuing offering this one to one support with folks. I'm probably only going to take on like one or two more clients in the new year, but I love working with people one to one throughout their pregnancy and their birth.
Um, And I and I offer kind of like a couple different packages, which are all on my my website in that capacity. And I will be continuing that a lot of that is virtual care. And a lot of that is virtual support. So I will be doing that kind of through this process of having of having this baby. But again, it's going to be limited.
I probably only have one or two more spots available for that. Yep, you're about to practice what you preach with everything we talked about today. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, so amazing. Well, thank you so much. I'll put all of that in the show notes for people to check out. What a great conversation and yeah, what you're doing, Hannah, just again, having that full spectrum of support for people.
So, so cool. I'm just so amazed with everything you're up to. And yeah, really thankful to have this talk with you today. Yeah, thanks Rhonda. This has been so great. I'm so happy to have talked to you. Yes, awesome. Good luck with the rest of your pregnancy and we'll chat soon. All right. Thanks.
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